IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fpr/ifprid/804.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Vulnerability and the impact of climate change in South Africa's Limpopo River Basin:

Author

Listed:
  • Shewmake, Sharon

Abstract

"This paper uses farmers' responses to exogenous weather shocks in South Africa's Limpopo River Basin to gauge how farmers are apt to respond to future climate change-induced shocks, in particular drought. Droughts are expected to increase in both frequency and intensity as a result of climate change. This study examines the costs of drought today and who it affects the most, in an effort to guide policy adaptations in the future. A combination of descriptive statistics and econometric analysis is used to approximate the potential impact of droughts on rural South African households. This paper also estimates household vulnerability. After controlling for household heterogeneity using propensity score matching, it is noted that there is no statistically significant impact of droughts on income, thus suggesting households have already adapted to living in a drought-prone environment. The types of households that were more vulnerable to climate shocks are analyzed using two measures of vulnerability: the probability of falling below income of 7,800 South African Rand (R), and the probability of income falling below 16,000 R. Residents of the Limpopo province were the least vulnerable under both metrics. Setswana and SeSwati households were more vulnerable than other ethnic groups. Households that do not own livestock and households that rely on rainfed agriculture were also more vulnerable than other households." from authors' abstract

Suggested Citation

  • Shewmake, Sharon, 2008. "Vulnerability and the impact of climate change in South Africa's Limpopo River Basin:," IFPRI discussion papers 804, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:fpr:ifprid:804
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00804.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ranganathan, C. & Palanisami, K. & Kakumanu, K. & Baulraj, A., 2011. "Mainstreaming the Adaptations and Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor due to Climate Change," ADBI Working Papers 333, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    2. Titay Zeleke & Fekadu Beyene & Temesgen Deressa & Jemal Yousuf & Temesgen Kebede, 2021. "Vulnerability of Smallholder Farmers to Climate Change-Induced Shocks in East Hararghe Zone, Ethiopia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-19, February.
    3. Sesmero, Juan P. & Ricker-Gilbert, Jacob E. & Cook, Aaron M., 2015. "How do African Farm Households Adapt to Climate Change? A Structural Analysis from Malawi," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212688, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Xiaohui Hou, 2010. "Can Drought Increase Total Calorie Availability? The Impact of Drought on Food Consumption and the Mitigating Effects of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(4), pages 713-737, July.
    5. Kiumars Zarafshani & Lida Sharafi & Hossein Azadi & Steven Van Passel, 2016. "Vulnerability Assessment Models to Drought: Toward a Conceptual Framework," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(6), pages 1-21, June.
    6. Witt, Rudolf & Waibel, Hermann, 2011. "Constraints to diversification of poor fishery-dependent households in Cameroon," African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 6(2), pages 1-21, September.
    7. Huifang Sun & Yaoguo Dang & Wenxin Mao, 2019. "Identifying key factors of regional agricultural drought vulnerability using a panel data grey combined method," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 98(2), pages 621-642, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Vulnerability; Climate change; drought;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fpr:ifprid:804. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.